In my previous post I spoke about sanctimonious know-alls. Well, after yesterday’s admissions, watch me now: I intend to be as sanctimonious today as I darn-well please.
Remember the war on Korea? No, you wouldn’t, because it’s rarely talked about and certainly nothing to be proud of. All we ever see of it are replays of the comedy Mash. Those who were naive enough – and most of us, then, were very naive, indeed – to take note of Foxy News probably swallowed the bait and believed the war was being waged in defence of democracy. But US defence of democracy can most kindly be compared to a series of raids of army ants. The purpose of the war was to limit the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence, which may be fine and dandy – depending on how you look at it – except that Korea belonged by rights to the Koreans.
At least we can be grateful that Truman explicitly forbade MacArthur to use the atomic bomb, and effectively sacked (or “recalled”) him in the end. Korea had to be permanently divided.
Source: Britannica
You will, however, remember Vietnam. Not because Foxy News finally owned up to the facts, but because so many US soldiers came back in coffins, if at all. Students protested against the draft, parents protested against loss of their sons, and footage and snapshots of US war crimes found their way to international news channels.
Did Foxy News admit that in South Vietnam, the US was supporting a nest of Frankensteins, a vicious dictator and his ghoulish wife and collaborators? Still, the dictator’s acts were not as embarrassing as the Buddhist monks setting fire to themselves in protest. (See the famous Malcolm Browne photo here.) Even McNamara was appalled, and the US eventually decided to allow a military coup against him – so much for “democracy”.
Now the war on Korea was probably no better. As in Vietnam, the US started by playing its cards through a puppet. In fact, they were the ones who installed the extremely brutal dictator Syngman Rhee in the first place.
The press is currently hounding the North Korean dictator. I can’t say I like him either. But had I been born in a country that had been destroyed almost down to the last blade of grass due to the hubris of a bully from the other side of the Pacific, I would have dreamt of revenge too.
Yes, I know I sound horrible. But think of how little North Korea must feel with a Trump riding his gilded horse into battle against the entire world, against the planet, no less. Mind you, it’s not just Trump, nor even Bush or Reagan or even Foxy News; it’s a narrative, a particularly dangerous narrative: Always the biggest, the best, the greatest, almost at any cost. Ordinary US Americans gain no benefit from that venomous narrative, which is fed to them from the day they learn to say “ma-ma”. No benefit at all.
There are those who do, though.